Aboriginal Education and the Story of the Koori Centre at the University of Sydney

John Cleverley and Janet Mooney

Taking Our Place tells the story of Aboriginal education and
the Koori Centre at the University of Sydney. Within its short history,
the university has embodied both the virtues and vices of Australia's
public attitudes to Indigenous people. The university's early teaching
and research focused on Aboriginal people as ethnographical specimens, a
race frozen in time.

More than a century would pass before two students identified as
Aborigines, Charles Perkins and Peter Williams, entered the university
gates. It was 1963. From that time on, an increasing numbers of
Indigenous Australians have studied and worked at the university,
contributing their knowledge and understanding to a learning society
from which they were once absent. Much more remains to be done.

This is the first account of struggles and outcomes arising from the
engagement of Indigenous people with a tertiary institution in
Australia, a place established by a white elite for its own purposes on
land taken from the Eora people. Today, the University of Sydney
promotes and celebrates the diversity of Indigenous education on campus.

Janet Mooney is the Director of the Koori Centre. She has worked for many years as a secondary school teacher and education consultant in Aboriginal education, as well as lecturer in the Aboriginal education assistants program at the Koori Centre.

John Cleverley was appointed director of the Aboriginal teachers aides training program in 1984 and continued to serve as director 'on and off' until 1991. Following his retirement, John has continued an association with the Koori Centre through to the present in mentoring and special project activities.